<p>That kind of leaping is just really unfortunate. And, I’m pretty sure you are unaware of or dismissing facts. That is not to say they did everything right. They didn’t. And, they apologized publicly.</p>
<p>This is the problem:
<a href=“Opinion | Is Everyone a Little Bit Racist? - The New York Times”>Opinion | Is Everyone a Little Bit Racist? - The New York Times;
<p>People don’t want to have racist attitudes, but they have them anyway. People don’t think they perform racist actions (like preferring white job candidates to black job candidates, or giving black people with broken legs less pain meds than white people with broken legs) but they do. And that’s the sad truth. We don’t want to face up to the wrong attitudes hanging around in our subconscious where we don’t want them.</p>
<p>I divide these things into categories and the least important would be unconscious actions or reactions. </p>
<p>Near the worst would be the kind of insanity expressed by the police officer who was requested to resign in Missouri after he posted things like the protestors should have been put down like rabid dogs. Same guy who pointed a rifle at protestors while screaming he would kill them. Imagine a non-cop doing that: it would be a criminal offense, meaning assault (because assault doesn’t require touching, just the instilling of fear), and it would be a felony because a deadly weapon was involved not merely a voice or a plastic spork. </p>
<p>The holding of a guy on the curb for way too long is not the worst. It seems he was treated worse because he is black but that’s mostly because I know the police simply don’t do that to respectable white people (though they do it to less respectable white people). This kind of thing becomes a form of social ranking in which it appears this relatively affluent black man was treated as though he were a less affluent white man. That’s a common complaint: as in, “can’t get a cab though I’m wearing a suit and the white guy in a ratty t-shirt gets picked up.” </p>
<p>Other things are hard to describe. What to make of a guy who dies because the police, against every policy set out by any department, used a taser on him time after time after time to make him get up and walk? I’d say it’s murder: the application of repeated, potentially deadly force shows a gross indifference to human life. It comes close to premeditation but not quite. </p>
<p>As to the MN case … I see that as 2 things. First, there’s the absolute judging of this black male as someone who can be manhandled because he’s black. That’s a form of social ranking because the equivalent socially ranked white male would have been treated with more politeness. Second, there’s this police attitude that every threat must be put down. That means police are now seeing x or y as “threats” rather than the traditional attitude that these are situations which need handling. I remember hearing the police talk about social policing and the word “threat” never would come up. The conversations were about how to handle “situations” - and that was reflected in the media and even on TV in cop dramas where they’d refer to “situations”. Now it’s about threats. This guy was uncooperative so rather than handle him as a “situation”, they handled him as a “threat” and put him down. This is the same logic that’s seen a huge rash of police killing family dogs because they barked or growled: cop comes into yard, dog starts barking, cop kills dog to put down threat. Can you remember this happening before? It didn’t because the cop would see this as a “situation” with violence to be avoided. Blame the terror mentality and the absurd militarization of police thinking.</p>
<p>What happened to him was unfortunate but I don’t know why he is being called a Hollywood producer. He hasn’t produced much. He has consulted and hosted a lot of seminars, though. </p>
<p>actingmt, do you think the cops knew about his resume when they approached him?</p>
<p>No, of course not. I think the cops mistakenly identified him as a bank robbery suspect since he fit the description and was a block away. A witness also said he was the guy that robbed the bank. No-one disputes that, including Mr. Belk. I just think the producer thing is a little weird after checking his credits. They are skimpy at best in terms of producing anything. There was an obscure music video in 2007 and a couple of unsold pilots.Of course, 3 out everyr 5 guys in your average Hollywood Starbucks is a producer. So yeah.</p>
<p>Lergnom, fantastic observations.</p>
<p>@Lergnom , Bravo!!! You get it, excellent summation!</p>
<p>My son turned me onto this guy’s channel a couple of months ago. If you saw him walking out of a 7Eleven, without knowing anything more about him other than his appearance, what would you assume about him? Watch his video, and tell me what you think of his perspective on Law Enforcement. At the very least, I would call it thought-provoking.</p>
<p><a href=“Why I Don't Like the Police - YouTube”>Why I Don't Like the Police - YouTube;
<p>
</p>
<p>I find this statement odd-- maybe I don’t understand it-- because to me, the unconscious reactions are enormously consequential. </p>
<p>The recruiter looks at Shaniqua’s resume. He would have called her in for an interview if the same resume had said “Emma” on top, but he unconsciously thinks Shaniqua is less qualified because she’s black. She doesn’t get the job. She doesn’t get the other fifteen jobs she applies for, either, even though equally qualified whites are hired.</p>
<p>The police officer sees the black executive, or the black honor student, or some other law-abiding black man, driving his own BMW. He thinks that something looks suspicious and stops the BMW, even though a white man in the same situation would not be stopped. That black man gets stopped every two weeks, even though he is law-abiding. Maybe the black man ends up being arrested or ticketed for some little thing- marijuana, or a missing registration, or no seat belt- even though the white guy wouldn’t have been arrested because he wouldn’t have been stopped in the first place.</p>
<p>The teacher is deciding who to recommend for the honors class. Somehow Tyrell doesn’t seem smart and gets skipped over, even though white students less capable than he is are recommended.</p>
<p>The cop is watching the two black teenagers walking down the middle of the street. He yells, “Get the f— out of the street.” If they had been white teenagers, he would have said, “Kids, you have to walk on the sidewalk.” The two black teenagers get mad and react in the wrong way. White teenagers would also have gotten mad (especially if they had been treated that way every day of their lives) but white teenagers do not get sworn at by this police officer.</p>
<p>The cops arrest a black man who fits the rather broad description of a bank robber. He quietly insists that he didn’t do it, and that he has an easily checked alibi. The police don’t bother to check, for six hours, even though it would have been easy to check, and even though if the guy had been white they would have checked. They are convinced he is guilty, even though he isn’t, and even though they wouldn’t have been so convinced if he had been a white guy matching a white guy description.</p>
<p>If a person goes through life being viewed as less capable, less honest and more violent in every single encounter with other people, that is going to make a huge difference in their life.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Lergmom,</p>
<p>The news I read stated the “rabid dog poster” was fired for violating his department’s social media use policy and the guy pointing his rifle was asked to resign or risk being terminated. The latter guy was allowed to resign because he had 20 years on the force and the authorities wanted to acknowledge that…despite the fact there seems to be prior disciplinary issues on record with him. </p>
<p>Even though the USA doesn’t think too much of the UN except to walk lock step and for coalitions to wage war, it is good see that the latter has condemned the racial disparity and police brutality that is quite pervasive. People in glass houses…
<a href=“UN Committee condemns U.S. for racial disparity, police brutality | PBS NewsHour”>http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/un-committee-condemns-us-racial-disparity-police-brutality/</a></p>
<p>I agree with you, Cardinal Fang that the “unconscious reactions” are some of the worst, because they allow for self-delusion, especially among social conservatives (and might I add, not a few “liberals”) who are far more offended by talk of racism than actual racism itself. It’s often been my observation that the people who stridently insist that there would be very few problems with race in this country if the “race baters” and “agitators” would shut the hell up and not run to every incipient controversy, are the same people who love to innumerate all the “ills of the black community”, and wonder why it can’t get its stuff in one sock the way “the Asians have”. They are the same people who defend the “research” of Shockley, Murray and Herrnstein, and the exact same who will pass over Shiniqua for Emma because of the it. They generally view black and brown people quite negatively (save for a couple they know personally, whom they grace with the compliment, “You don’t seem very black to me at all!”). But these same people would swear on the life of their very mother that they are not racist, or “no more than anyone else” because, “everybody is a little bit racist.”
8-| </p>
<p>IMO, there are many, many liberals who believe they are not racist, and who would never utter an intentionally racist comment, but who unconsciously prefer the white candidate, or unconsciously cross the street when they see a black man walking because he seems dangerous, or find some reason to justify not recommending the black student or the black employee for some honor. </p>
<p>A lot of brain work goes on that is not under our conscious control. Our unconscious learns things that it can’t unlearn, even though the conscious is not aware of these thoughts. This is the reality of how our brains work. And therefore, knowing that we make snap judgments that are wrong, we have to consciously compensate for our unconscious failings.</p>
<p>We have to watch out. Our unconscious says that Shaniqua is not as good a candidate as Emily. And then, if we are asked to justify this, our conscious is excellent about rationalizing that snap decision: Emily’s working at a free internship is better than Shaniqua’s paid food service job; Emily’s study of algorithms is more valuable to our company than Shaniqua’s study of operating systems. We think those are great reasons, but they’re actually rationalizations, because if the case was reversed we’d say that working for pay was better experience than working for free, and operating systems are more important than algorithms for us. We don’t have access to the reasons for unconscious decisions, only the results of unconscious decisions.</p>
<p>In fact, we know that employers prefer resumes with “white” names to identical resumes with “black” names. We know that employers prefer resumes with male names to resumes with female names. No amount of rationalization will explain that away, because it’s true.</p>
<p>Last Sunday after the worship service, my treasurer called out to me that “someone’s here looking for you to ask for assistance”; meaning the grocery store gift cards that (to her disgust) we keep on hand for people in need of food help. </p>
<p>Had she walked up the the man and said “hello”, she would have discovered that he was the pastor of the Spanish-language service that meets in our building in the afternoon, who had arrived early to give her a contribution to help pay our heat and electric bills. He happens to have a well-paying secular job and certainly doesn’t need a handout.</p>
<p>Similarly, a young Hispanic couple came to my other church to make arrangements for using our fellowship room for a baby shower. They had called first, but accidentally went to the church across our parking lot instead of mine. The woman who came to open the door there, without ever greeting them or asking what they wanted immediately said to them “we don’t give out assistance”. </p>
<p>But, of course, my treasurer and the woman across the street would NEVER consider themselves racist…</p>
<p>The point is, the treasurer and the woman across the street are making snap judgments below the level of rationality, as we all do constantly. They are not consciously racist. They don’t intend to be racist. But their actions end up being, well, racist.</p>
<p>A whole lot of us (including me, and probably including most people reading this) make racist judgments even though we don’t want to.</p>
<p>I say unconscious reactions are not worst for 2 major reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>We are clearly responsible for actions we choose.</li>
<li>Unconscious reactions are more likely to adjust if we act properly and internalize that. </li>
</ol>
<p>For example, as a normal-ish person, if I see a kid wearing certain clothes coming toward me on a dark sidewalk I have a variety of thoughts but it’s what I choose to do that counts, whether that’s acting for my safety or acting like an idiot.</p>
<p>It’s difficult to draw exact lines between what we choose and we act out. When police choose to arrest the black guy, not the white guy, one could say they’re acting out of racial profiling but what they’re doing is a choice because they have training, because there are policies supposedly in place to protect the innocent from abuse of authority, etc. That they view black men as threats is both conscious and unconscious but I’m comfortable putting their actions in the “choose” category.</p>
<p>I’m less clear about many actions people point to as proof of racist behavior. I’ve seen this kind of thing done in a variety of languages - pick the minority name, which is often different ethnically and see the resume, application for credit, housing, etc. rejected. Some of these are unconscious but many are actual choices and the problem is, to me, that one has to be careful comparing human behavior with some absolute standard in which everything is done without any favoritism. Pretty women get attention but may not get respect. Good looking men get hired. Tall people get hired and there’s a relationship between height and earnings (within bands and with a lot of problems in the research but I’ll cite it for effect). If you’re articulate, you’re more likely to be hired even if the job requires better math skills. Much of hiring is a guess so people guess in ways that fit what they find attractive or what they think will fit in or in some other way. Racism? Heightism? Ageism? Compared to an absolute blind selection, sure but is it really? I say no because the idea of such a standard is absurd.</p>
<p>What if you have a smallish company and a woman in hijab applies. She’s roughly equivalent to the other applicants. If she were a star and you needed a star like that and you reject her, you could say a) you’re an idiot and b) you’re choosing to be racist. But odds are pretty good she’s similar. By the ideal standard, the hijab doesn’t exist but in real life it does. Same as if your candidate has visible tattoos or wears a huge cross. These kind of differences are hard to evaluate. You can’t refuse to hire a disabled person but you can choose to hire someone else if you aren’t refusing the disabled person because of the disability. That’s hard to prove in many cases, which is why firing not hiring cases tend to do better in the courts; it’s easier to show a motive if a good employee is let go, partly because there’s a record and maybe witnesses who can describe conversations and attitudes. </p>
<p>In other words, I don’t hold people to absolute standards. I try to hold them to rational standards, particularly rational standards of action. I don’t believe in policing thoughts. For example, I don’t care if a person thinks about sex with children but I do care if they act on that. </p>
<p>Part of the difference is encoded in religion. Judaism is about actions and includes a recognition that thought is not the same as what you do, that intentions are not actions, that while beliefs translate into action this isn’t always true or even partly true. The Torah is full of exhortations to get people to turn belief into action. It’s full of examples of people believing they’re doing right but not - as in Judah’s behavior to Tamar. Those stories are often about duties and responsibilities and the entire concept of the Hebrews as “a holy people” - not “the” - is that it signifies undertaking a set of obligations, a peculiar set of jobs described for this particular group. Those mitzvot are what you do. Much of the Chassid learning is about uncovering the substance of doing, as in stories of rabbis not following the exact rules because this other act is more devotional in the circumstance (such as sitting with a sick child instead of going to pray). </p>
<p>Christianity is far more inward-looking and there is far more interest in the history of Church thoughts going back to Paul in what you think and feel. </p>
<p>This is where we disagree: </p>
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</p>
<p>They’re not. They’re just not, even though we wish they would. That’s the trouble. These biases don’t go away.</p>
<p>For a non-racial example, recall the paper last year where the authors sent resumes with male or female names on the top to science labs at universities. You would think (or at least I would think) that people who work in science labs want to hire the best candidate regardless of gender. But when these people were asked to evaluate the candidates, knowing nothing but what was on the resume, they evaluated the male candidates much higher. They said the male candidates were more competent and deserved much higher salaries than identical female candidates. Both male and female hiring managers exhibited this bias.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html”>http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html</a></p>
<p>If you asked those faculty members if they were biased against women, they would say and believe that they weren’t. But they were biased, even though they didn’t want to be. They don’t want that bias, they are embarrassed that they have it, some of them tried to explain it away, but nonetheless, the bias is there, and therefore competent young women are going to have a tougher time getting a job in that field than less competent young men.</p>
<p>I agree with you that actions are more important than subconscious tendencies. But subconscious tendencies influence actions in ways we don’t notice.</p>
<p>Lergnom and Cardinal, thank you both for this honest look at how people view others.</p>
<p>I think it’s crazy to pretend bias doesn’t exist. Studies have shown that people gravitate toward romantic partners that have similar levels of attractiveness. I don’t care that much about looks, but I know I prefer people I find to be my intellectual peers within a certain range. Maybe the first part of acknowledging racism/genderism/any-ism is to concede that we all make subconscious judgments, and that they are not all rational.</p>
<p>The amazing thing about bias that’s defined as neither intentional or self-evident to the offender is the necessity of having your biased behavior judged by a… personal bias coach? Some selfless minder you tote around on your shoulder?</p>
<p>The definition of ‘empowerment’ will need another line or two, at the least.
</p>